Dirty Laundry
by jaqofspades
Summary: Weevil isn't thinking about his beer, or how the joint in the oven is making the whole house smell like pork roast. He is standing at the foot of his bed with fresh linen in his arms, staring at the dirty sheets.


Disclaimer: This work of fanfiction is created for fun, not profit, and no violation of copyright is intended.

A/N: Weevil's comment in the season two opener - "I bet they have clean sheets" - always made me wonder about the subtext. Why would you allude to clean sheets – or sheets at all – unless there had been… less clean sheets?

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><p><strong>Dirty Laundry<strong>

Sunday, after Mass and before they sit down to almuerzo at two, the Navarro clan cleans house.

Letty, of course, is the commandant, ordering her children and grandchildren about with an efficiency that would make the Marines proud. Those who actually live in the house clean their own rooms, plus help in the kitchen or bathroom; those who sleep elsewhere but still call Letty's house home take on smaller tasks, or make a start on lunch. It's a thing of pride, a clean house, and a tall, cold drink with lunch tastes so much better when you've earned it, Abuela has always said.

Weevil isn't thinking of how good his beer will taste, or how the joint in the oven is making the whole house smell like pork roast. He's standing at the foot of his bed with fresh linen in his arms, staring at the dirty sheets.

In his mind's eye, a small, blonde girl is lying in the centre of the bed, leaning back on her elbows, waiting. A man - dark, and mean-looking, nowhere near good enough for her – smirks in response, and lowers himself down next to her. He watches them tease each other for a moment or two, and then, when the cholo pushes his tongue deep into her mouth, sees the moment they ignite.

He thinks about how they must have looked, together on his bed: his black wifebeater thrown on top of her little red t-shirt, his blunt, brown fingers plucking at pale pink nipples, her chocolate-stained mouth tracing its way down his multicoloured torso. The details are sketchy after that, but amidst the rush of sensation he remembers thinking "this is crazy" and "it's Veronica-fucking-Mars," and "please, please, don't ever leave."

Later, he toughed it out and told himself a guy'd say anything when he came that hard, and that everybody said Veronica knew how to lay the pipe right, and that's all it was. She was tight and hot and he'd wanted her for a while and that's _all_ it was. But something is blurring his vision as he stares down at his bed, and he has to drag in a deep breath to force himself into movement as he prepares to change the sheets.

They still smell of her, and he can't bring himself to rip them off, but he knows he has to, just like he knows she's gone.

Veronica is still in Neptune. Most of the time, she is still two blocks away, in the shithole apartment which is smaller than Abuela's living room, even if it is right by the beach. Some of the time, though, she's further up the coast, in the heart of the 09, with him. She's made her choice, Weevil thinks, and he tries to hate her for it.

He almost manages it when the fire at the community pool shuts it down. He runs into them outside the Sac 'n' Pac, and Veronica looks like she wants to say something, but she is clinging to that motherfucker's hand. He looks at her with disgust in his eyes, then cuts her dead, pushing right past her to get up in Echoll's face.

"Love the new cologne, Richie Rich. Be careful no one lights up near you, smelling like that," he sneers.

Echolls smiles beatifically. "Well, Veronica likes it, don't you ... V?", he says, pulling her in close to his side. Weevil sees her pull away from him, sees the unhappy set of her mouth, but all he hears is Echolls' voice, taunting him, using the nickname Weevil had given her.

He drops him, right there in the parking lot at the Sac 'n' Pac, and he tells himself it's about those motherfuckers burning down the pool, it's about Echolls killing Felix. It's nothing to do with the sight of her small hand smothered in his, or look on her face, begging him to stop wailing on her boy. She throws herself over him, guarding him with her tiny body, and he's never hurt a girl, and he wouldn't, but he can't help feel a surge of pleasure when his kick comes close enough to make her flinch, even if he had known it would never connect.

She hadn't known. Maybe she expected it of him – to want to hurt her. That's how wrong things had gone between them.

She'd rolled out of his bed on Monday morning, given him the most blinding smile he'd ever seen, and kissed him hot and dirty before she swung her way home for a change of clothes before school. He'd been stalking her through the halls – if he has to be honest, hoping to lure her into the girls bathroom for a little play - when he heard her talking to the Sherriff on the phone. Echolls. It was Echolls, he heard, and he'd rounded up the boys, and they'd headed out, and they'd found him, about to jump from the Coronado bridge.

Didn't even know what came next – he was unconscious – but when he came to, Hector's babbling about Felix, Felix is dead, Echolls killed Felix, and he needed her. Just – needed her. So he crawled his way to her door, only to find his best friend's murderer cozied up in her lap.

She couldn't know, he told himself. Later, he found out what old man Echolls had done, and he wanted to kill him with his bare hands – twice, once for Lilly and again for Veronica – and he's worried about her, so he went to see her again.

Her stare was like ice.

"You tried to kill Logan," she said. "You disgust me."

And she slammed the door in his face.

He thinks back to how it began, and hates that this is how it will end. He'd never expected to make a friend, that day he taped Fennel to the flagpole, but by the time Christmas had rolled around, he would nod, and she'd saunter over, and they would trade innuendoes just for the fun of it. He'd made it to speed dial on her phone – number 3, after the Sheriff, and her homeboy – and she'd even stopped grilling him when he was the one who needed a favour.

When he'd heard she was fucking around with Echolls the first time, he'd cursed a blue streak, but he wasn't particularly surprised. Wasn't even particularly jealous - Carmen Ruiz had heard about Tad's date with the flagpole and had been waiting beside his bike the next day. They'd gone out a few times, and all those dangerous curves made it easy to forget he'd been getting way too close to Veronica Mars. But then Echolls had fucked up somehow, and Veronica had called him to come get her, and by the time they pulled up in front of her door, her eyes were wet with tears. He'd pulled her into his arms and let her cry, feeling guilty for enjoying it so much, because she was hurting and he hated to see her like that, but he knew he'd seen something no one else had, and she felt so fucking right in his arms.

He chased her down at the beach the next day, sat himself in the sand next to her and waited for her to say something. She turned to him, eventually, hunching up her shoulders and glaring at him. When he made it clear she wasn't gonna scare him off, she made a face and looked away, muttering something.

"Que?"

She turned back to him, annoyed.

"Thank you, Weevil. For ..." she waved her hand in a vague gesture that encompassed the whole of creation.

"... everything, I guess. Picking me up. Looking after me." Her face screwed up like she was sucking lemons. Chica wasn't good at gratitude.

But that wasn't what he was looking for, so he let her off the hook with a shrug.

"You eaten?" he asked, and she hadn't, so she came back to Abuela's house, and stuffed her little body full of pollo con arroz, and then dumbfounded them all by still having room for flan.

He was schooling her in Grand Theft Auto when he mentioned the mole.

"Chocolate sauce? With chicken?" she'd wondered, obviously intrigued.

"Hells, yeah! Ain't just chocolate, there's chilli too, and other stuff … like nothing you ever tasted, V ..."

Abuela's mole was the best, he'd said, but she was taking the kids down to see their Dad in Chino straight after work on Friday, so she'd have to come for dinner after they got back ...

"You're not telling me you can't cook, vato?" she'd teased, and that Friday night, they trashed abuela's kitchen, making mole. They chopped four types of chilli, ate a mound of raisins, and ground the entire stock of almonds … and he put Veronica in charge of melting the chocolate.

He'd turned back from grinding the spices and Veronica had a long smear of chocolate from cheekbone to chin, blue eyes sparkling with faux innocence as she stirred the melting mass.

"Just a little taste, hey chica?"

She'd pouted. He had nearly stopped breathing, and it wasn't just because it was goddamn hot. What really rocked him was how happy she looked. Like she was having fun, here, with him. He'd never seen Veronica Mars look like that before, and maybe it made him a little crazy.

"What if I want some?" he'd said, and backed her up against the refrigerator, rasping his tongue over the long line of stolen chocolate. By the time it was all gone, he'd moved on to her lips and her mouth was open and he was drowning in the sweetness of it, her mouth and her tongue and her fingernails scraping down his back underneath his shirt.

The chocolate on the hob congealed into a burnt, black mass, but neither of them were interested in mole any more. When they'd finished devouring each other, she'd simply walked straight into his room.

He stared at the blackened pan for a long moment before turning off the gas and following her. She was lying on his bed, waiting. She rose up on her elbows when he walked in after her, and he was busy telling himself to calm down and not be a fool and she might not mean it, but her eyebrows rose in challenge, and he had to take that dare. He leaned over to kiss her, and then his shirt was coming off and so was hers and even before he thought to breathe they were naked and he was moving inside of her, and he didn't even use a condom because that's how stupid Veronica Mars makes him.

The next day, he's scraping the burnt mess out of the saucepan, and it occurs to him that Veronica Mars is just like _chocolate_ – not the crap stuff you buy in the stores, but the real, 70% dark that you need for mole. Smooth and rich and so sweet he wanted to gorge himself on her. It's the spicy, bitter finish, though, that makes you want more. Makes you addicted.

And now he stares at the dirty sheets, and realises how right he was. Not just any chocolate, but the concoction they'd created together – and destroyed. There's something wrong underneath that sassy, seductive veneer, something dark and tainted by violence and loss. He can see it in her eyes, he sees it in Echolls, and sometimes, he can't look at himself in the bathroom mirror, because sees it there too.

Loss. Anger. Self-destruction. Hate. Violence. Desperation.

So much dirty laundry, he thinks, as he shakes his head and succumbs to the inevitable. He strips the bed mechanically, throwing the stained bedsheets straight into the washing machine across the hall. He sets it to agitating, then returns to his own room to remake the bed.

The sheets are white, and they no longer smell like sex and Veronica. He tells himself that it's better that way, and that he needs to be over her, to be done with this. But what he needs and what he's gonna get are two different things, and soon enough, she'll want something, and he'll find a way to forgive her.

And that's the thought that helps him throw the faded blue bedspread over clean, white sheets, and close the door behind him.

_fin_


End file.
